


Broken Glass

by ShadowPorpoise



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Errortale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Inktale (Undertale), Angst, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Violence, Character Development, Conversations, Dialogue Heavy, Drama, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Friends, Fluff and Angst, Frenemies, Friends to Enemies, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, No Amnesia, No Plot/Plotless, No Romance, No Smut, Not Canon Compliant, Origin Story, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Self-Worth Issues, Short, Slice of Life, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Understanding, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowPorpoise/pseuds/ShadowPorpoise
Summary: You wanted to prove it. That’s what you tell yourself, as you look down into the array of broken glass and muddied color bleeding out into the empty whiteness.He’s staring at you like you’ve gone crazy, only you know you already were.You were almost out again already. Seeing them smashed, splattered into nothing is just about enough to push you over the edge.Into sweet, sweet numbness.
Relationships: Ink & error, Ink!Sans & Error!Sans, Sans & Sans (Undertale)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	1. The Overseen

**Author's Note:**

> If you've clicked on this series before, you might be thinking, "Wait a minute. What happened to all the chapters?"
> 
> Well, I've actually compiled them all into two long chapters now! Makes it easier, right? (Right?)
> 
>  **SO CHAPTER 3 WILL BE THE ONLY NEW CONTENT.** It will be out very soon. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> As a side note I just want to add a request of you. If you enjoy the things I write... would you mind leaving me a comment? Even if it's just a short one. I am only human and sometimes I struggle with motivation. I love writing for my own sake, but I'd like to know I'm making other people happy too. Thanks ^-^

You’ve known about him for a while. Like a shadow he passes just behind you, swallowing the stars.

You remember when you first laid eyes on him, all tangled in his own tears at the fringes of a dying universe. He was trapped, somewhere between what is perceived and what is real, that middle ground abhorred even by the dead. And he _was_ dead, sort of. Enough that he wouldn’t get back in, no matter how he struggled - and he did struggle, if not for that. You lost yourself a little, in watching him; it was fascinating, really, to see those voluntarily, desperate attempts to break free from his own renewed emotions. You weren’t sure how long you waited before you noticed.

He was reaching, not for the place he had left, but upward - outward, toward the void.

The least you could do was give him a hand. Or rather, a brush. With one sweeping stroke you clove an opening, just big enough for him to pass through, and just careless enough for you to nearly fall through yourself, before you regained your footing. You hadn’t put much thought into it after all. You didn’t have to.

You didn’t let him see you. You’re not sure if he would have, even if you did. He was all but blind then, all eyes that wept blood and vomited sadness more confining than bondage.

The edges bit into his palms like broken glass, but he didn’t let go, didn’t fall back into the less than nothing he’d become. Slowly, painfully he hauled himself up, into an existence both more and less than death, and lay there gasping when he’d finished.

You realized you were grasping at the vials on your chest. Just in case. But judging from those great, shuddering sobs, he didn’t need them. And that was the most thing fascinating of all.

You weren’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. You decided neither, and let your hands fall, back down your sides.

And all at once you didn’t want him to know. That you were here. That you were anywhere at all. To watch you, the way you watched him. To maybe even try and help you, the way you helped him.

And so you closed the gap, swiftly, behind him. Behind you, since you’d turned around by then. You’ve always had poor impulse control. And even worse damage control. It goes against your ethics, to change anything. To help anyone, when it means changing anything. Altering, the natural course of things.

Only, the destroyer isn’t natural. And neither are you.

And that’s why you left him there, alone in the void.

* * *

You’ve known about him for a while. Like a shadow he passes just behind you, swallowing the stars.

You remember when you went back and looked for him, where you left him at the fringes of a dying universe.

It was gone.

Nothing but dust, specks of residual matter in the fabric that is spacetime, and that fascinating, reborn individual nowhere to be seen.

You weren’t really sure why you’d come back to begin with, only that it was eating away at you, sticking in the back of your head the way few things did these days. The way nothing had, really, in an unfathomably long time, which is why you wrote it all down, usually. But you hadn’t written this down. You hadn’t wanted to remember.

You’re used to being able to choose - what you remember, and what you feel. But you didn’t choose this. That terrifying lurch, when you couldn’t find it. That sinking, suffocating guilt, when you couldn’t find _him_. And what did you expect to happen, anyway, when you left him. When you set him loose in the multiverse, and not even a word.

You aren’t good with words. There aren’t exactly a whole lot of people to talk to out here; none, until now - maybe. And that only thanks to you.

You aren’t good with emptiness, either. With nothing where there used to be something, and that only thanks to you, too, probably.

Quickly, and without much thought, you whipped something up to put it its place. The AU, that is. It was mindless work, really, and more an attempt at distraction than anything else. But in the end, it wasn’t much of a one.

That night you sketched it. Stringy, suffocating tears. Bloodred pain on the borders of the light. Terror, at the edges of excitement. Remorse, in the hollows of relief. You didn’t draw the emptiness, because you can’t draw that. You can only know it is there, or not. And that more than anything is what kept you awake that night.

* * *

You’ve known about him for a while. Like a shadow he passes just behind you, swallowing the stars.

You remember when you first went back to check on it, that place you left in the shadow of a dying universe.

It was gone.

Nothing but dust, specks of residual matter in the fabric that is spacetime.

And that’s when you got angry. Or rather, decided you’d get angry, and no shortage of red paint to help you with it. You made it all up again, exactly same as before, and not because you particularly cared for that universe, but only because you had a right to. A right to make what you wanted, and find it there, when you came back.

And so it’s become a routine now. You wake up only to go back to that place. Fill it with whatever you can think of, whatever wants to be made, at the time. Because you aren’t afraid, of the void. Of the emptiness that swallows that place without fail, every night. You are only angry, and angrier still, with every stroke of your brush.

Until finally you decide to wait for him. To wait for _it,_ the destroyer of worlds, that dares set his abysmal foot to the place that you have made. You don’t know that you’re much of a fighter. Never had the opportunity. You suppose most people try to avoid it, when they can. But there are some situations that call for action. And so you grasp your brush in both hands, not sure, entirely, how you intend to use it, and sit. On the edges of void, with your feet dangling off into the whiteness just shy of the boundary. It’s a safe enough assumption you’ll notice he’s here, before it’s too late.

And sure enough that ripple of unrest across the surface, just about the time you’d normally be back at home, sleeping, or else sketching by dim lamplight in senseless concern for the assumed living schedules of your companions. You leap to your feet, dashing barefoot over the trembling surface, the quaking, disintegrating matter that is the short-lived border of… what were you going to call it, -tale? You forget.

It’s the scarf. And trying to read it, that trips you up. That sends you sprawling, face first into the fragmenting atmosphere. You sit up, spitting, and grasping your side.

He’s there. Silhouetted from behind by a great, searing light. Explosions like fireworks, raining colors into the grass, bleeding paint into tiny droplets of rainbow-colored dust. You cover your nose and mouth with one gloved hand, but still it drifts into your sockets, the stinging remnants of death and disintegration.

“H-Hey… wait.” You practiced this. This… confrontation. This bold defense of what you made, of what they made, of all that is made in the face of the _un-_ maker. But somehow all those carefully planned speeches die in your throat, choked by the fear and the darkness and the nothing, nothing, nothing.

You close your eyes briefly. He’s getting closer. And the sound of the end, rattling in your skull. You open your mouth, all but gagging at the taste, and try again. “Hey, can you not… destroy everything I make?”

* * *

Strings. Spilling from his sockets and twined, cat’s cradle around red and golden fingers. Whatever they touch, no, whatever he flings them at is destroyed, no sooner entangled than it is nothing at all, and more of that insufferable powder in its place. Red and black bones emerge from what is mostly typical Sans attire, save for the colors. A twisted, long-suffering scowl, pinching his face, contorting his brow. And his eyes like bloodshot swellings in the gaps where empty sockets should be, all but swallowing the eery golden gleam of his eye-lights.

His head snaps a little to one side and he squints at you, alert but not surprised. You draw yourself up, trying to regain some semblance of your former disdain, and perhaps it works because he stops. Just a few yards off, and sizing you up. For a long moment you stare at each other, he with one hand outstretched and poised, just waiting to pull the nearest tree into nothing. You on your knees in tall grass, and some of it all stuck in your scarf and around your head.

Then he moves. Yanks with two fingers. A loud, splintering sound and it dissolves, a great redwood on the borders of the path. And the patch of stars, of dusky sky just overhead. You wince, covering your head on instinct as it rains down, a splattering of ash and dying matter collecting in the folds of your scarf and clinging to your bones like invisible testimonies to an insufferable crime. And somehow, as you sit up again and pull your hands away, it smears - beneath your eyes and down your cheeks, even as it sticks within the grooves between your fingers.

But when you look, he’s still there. And staring. “You… d-didn’t make this,” he says, and when he speaks it’s as though one small portion of his words is rearranged, is erased from its place and implied at all others, so that they overlap in a dissonance of incompatible syllables.

You blink at him, as with one sentence he destroys you too, and not even a single floating particle in the wake. “I helped,” you respond lamely, and your voice all weak and choked with your own broken attempts at creation.

His face twitches with incomprehension. Blips out of focus for a moment. Then - “M-Move.”

A command. And nothing particularly hostile about it. But truthfully, you’re not sure if you could comply, even if you wanted to. And that more than anything, more even than idle curiosity, prompts your next response.

“Or what?”

Another pause. A glitch, in his face. “My quarrel is not with y-you,” he says then. And still he hasn’t come a step closer.

Fascinating. And for one impossible moment you want to step aside. If only to see what he does.

It’s enough. You always did have poor impulse control.

You get to your feet somehow. And the dust comes off you in sheets. You stumble, back out of his path. You watch, as he passes, winding up those strings for another throw. After all, that’s what it was made for. All of it. Constructed only to be destructed, or isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you were thinking when you made it, when you thought to make it with little to no real thought at all, in the place of a far older world, and you waited there for it to start, for the destruction to start and for the destructor to come so you could have it out with him before the backdrop of a senseless, soulless decoy gone up in flames?

His bones rattle and scrape against one another like nails on a chalkboard when he’s finished, when he’s finished and trembling with exhaustion, doubled down with both hands on his knees - a blood red, shadowy figure in the whiteness, in the nothingness of the newly reestablished void.

“What’s your name?” you ask him, seated idle and crosslegged on what was the ground, once.

He squints again, eye-lights flicking toward you before rolling up in an attitude of remembrance.

“Sans,” he grates. And you burst out laughing.

* * *

You aren’t used to your own laugh. It sounds funny, even to you, and that makes you want to laugh harder. But you try to hold it in when you catch sight of the genuine confusion, the despondency riddled in his face.

“Ah, sorry,” you gasp. “Here, let me think…” And you study him for a moment, the shifting pixels, the symbols glitching in the fabric of his design. You rock forward, coming to a sudden conclusion, and get to your feet. “How about I call you Error? Will that work?”

Something dies behind his eyes at the word. He drops his gaze, examining his own shabby, almost digital form where it has dismantled itself to form the sign. But, “I guess,” he concedes without a fuss, and squints at you. “Y-You’re the one who got me out, r-right? Should probably thank you.” But he doesn’t, only keeps fiddling with his clothing, with his strings and his own hands in a vain attempt to smooth out the glitches. He looks so exhausted, so disoriented and forlorn that you almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

Still, it is late. You cock your head at him. “Welp. You can come along with me if you like.”

His head snaps up. Stunned. Wary. “What?”

You step closer, reaching back for the handle of your brush, and his whole body stiffens. Blips into squiggly patterns as he backs away. “W-watch it,” he gets out, and you slow, broomy in one hand and dripping purple into the white.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe,” you assure him, splattering a bit more just to be sure. “I travel this way all the time. Oh, but…” You stop, and hug the giant broom to your chest in sudden indecision. “I guess you’re too tired now, anyway, but I’d appreciate it if you’d hold off on the destruction while we’re there. At home, I mean. That’s fair, isn’t it? You understand.”

He gapes at you, nonplussed and silent, and you decide that’s answer enough. You replace Broomy at your back, stepping away from the little pool. “Guests first.” Not that you’ve ever really had guests. Not much, anyway. But it seems right.

He doesn’t move.

You study a moment, struggling to think what the issue might be. “Come on,” you tell him finally, and you’re almost pleading. “You’ve been in the void a while now, right? It gets to you, after a while. Believe me. And you haven’t got anywhere else to go, now you’ve… I mean, now it’s gone.”

A quiet, immeasurable pause. Then he takes a step forward. Just one. And hugs himself. Uncertain. But there’s something desperate in his face, a look you know all too well, and you’re sure he’ll come, given time. So you step back toward the little splatter of purple on the ground, and grin at him. “Well, I’ll go on through to show you how it’s done, then, and you come along whenever you’re ready.”

And you vanish with a splat.

* * *

You pretend you’re not waiting, while you put on the teakettle. But you check it for paint residue, just in case.

You pretend you’re not waiting, when you put the cups on the table. And a cloth, to hide your scribbling. Probably should’ve put that on first, since now the cups are under it.

You pretend you’re not waiting, when you turn the burner on low, to keep the water hot. When you start scribbling on the tablecloth too, and all that effort wasted now.

But then, at long last there’s a crash from above, followed by a series of glitched out curses. You dash for the stairs; you always try to avoid paint splatters in the kitchen. Don’t want to slip with something hot. “Are you alright? Come on down when you’re ready!” you call up, and flip the burner back on.

It’s a tall, rambling house with a lot of twists and turns, and it’s no small wonder he takes so long to get down. “The h-hell is this place,” he grumbles when he does, and still holding his head with one hand.

“Ah, sorry,” you gasp again, pouring hot water all over the counter. “Probably doesn’t look much like a home to you. I try to stay away from all that… typical Snowdin house stuff. Get sick of seeing it, you know.”

And maybe Error does too, since he doesn’t say anything more about it. Just stares at where he is meant to sit while you swab up the mess.

“Just a sec.” You’re muttering. “I’m not used to having… I get so distracted. People are always telling me… well, no, not really, but when people _do_ tell me anything, it’s that I’m clumsy. There!” You set the cups down, careful not to spill this time, and he seems to get it because he sits down. Finally. He doesn’t take his drink though. Only looks down a bit, frowning.

“Oh!”

He nearly jumps out of his chair.

“Sorry.” Seems you’ve been saying that a lot today. “I just thought… maybe you night be hungry. I sometimes forget. To eat, I mean.” You flop down in your own seat, hands folded in your lap before you can do anymore damage.

He’s got one elbow on the table, and a hand at his forehead. “N-No, thank you,” he sighs abruptly, and you nod. Reach for your drink. Start playing, with the teabag.

You keep quiet, now thoroughly distracted again, until after a while he speaks.

“Y-You said you’re a Sans?”

You stare. Scratch your head. “Uh, no, I don’t think I did. Maybe? I don’t always remember… what…” That look on his face. “I mean, yes, yes I am, sorry, is that what you meant?”

He rolls his eyes by way of response. But he’s got his tea. And he’s drinking it. “You act more like an Alphys,” he mutters.

“Really? Oh.” You’re not sure how to respond to that. You drink your tea, too. Needs paint.

And maybe he can see you’re somewhat deflated because when next he speaks he doesn’t sound so abrasive. “Y-You got a name?”

“Ink.” You end up spitting tea halfway across the table in your rush to answer, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He doesn’t seem to notice a lot of things, come to think of it.

“That your artwork on the walls?”

“Uh-huh.” Idiot! You should’ve taken down the old stuff. Before you know it, you’re sliding your sketch book across the table. “I do a lot better than that now,” you babble, nearly knocking it into his mug. “You can look, if… if you want.”

The barest trace of a smile. On his face, for the first time. Maybe he really likes art? Or… wait, that’s not it. He’s laughing at you.

It’s too late now to take back now. He’s holding it. Right up in front of his face.

“Do you not see well?” You’re up in a moment. “Here, I can…” And you’ve splat Broomy, right on the table. “Only, I don’t know exactly, how strong you need them.” You hand him the glasses - red, circular frames, because they match.

He gapes. Visibly shaking as he reaches for them. “H-How… How did you do that?”

You grin. “It’s the paints,” with a gesture at your vials. “I can make whatever I want.”

He peeks through them at a distance. Sets them back down on the table. Staring.

“Don’t… Don’t they work? Oh, well, you might need an eye doctor then. I don’t normally… make that kind of stuff, on my own. But don’t worry, we’ll find someone. Not here maybe, but there are plenty of people who can… who can…” He’s not listening to you. His face is drawn, like he’s going to be sick.

“…Error?”

A rising panic. His or yours, you aren’t sure. You’ve got a bucket ready, for times like these. You’ve done your fair share of throwing up, after all.

He gets up, and starts for the front door. With those strings still wrapped around his fingers.

Never mind, you’re definitely the one panicking. You’re in his path again, before he gets there, pressed back against the door with your arms spread out. “Where are you going?”

The swift change in tone stops him.

“M-Move,” he blips again, only this time you won’t be stepping aside. Manners be damned.

“No. You move."

He doesn't, and you close your eyes. Steeling yourself. Then -

"Back. Up.” you hiss through clenched teeth.

And he does, slowly. Staring you down the whole time.

Turns out you’re not very good at this hospitality stuff, after all. “Uhm. Let's... start over," you manage, and you're almost smiling. "Can I get you any more tea?”

* * *

“Why?”

He won’t stop asking you.

“You… You should know as well as anyone, how it is. D-Don’t you?”

It’s a good thing you’ve already got a guest room, since you don’t think he could handle it if you made one just now. You’re not sure why you put it there, though. Maybe you’re partial to those Snowdin houses after all.

“You can stay here, as long as you need,” you tell him, switching on the lamp. “It should be fine. I mean, it’s never been used, so…”

“Don’t you… Don’t you… have….” He stops. Standing there in the doorway. Drops his gaze. “Look, I’m…. I’m not t-trying to get in your business. But I… can’t…”

“Why don’t we talk about this tomorrow? I know I can’t think straight when I’m tired.”

He gets out of the way.

“And, Error…” You stop, in the hallway. “I’m not locking the front door.”

Silence. “W-Wouldn’t need it, anyway,” he grumbles at last from within.

You’re not sure why, but that makes you feel better.

There’s pieces of artwork up all over the walls in your room. Some of them from years back. Feels like you had a whole different style back then. Watercolors, most of them. Too much color, it seems to you now. You run your fingers along the crinkled edges. Flop down, onto your bed. You’ve got a pencil there somewhere, on the nightstand. But you left your book downstairs. You sit up, but don’t go back down. Instead you reach for them, the old pages, just above the headboard. Peel them up, at the corners. They tear a little, away from the tape. But it doesn’t matter. You can just make more, anyway.

Better ones, probably.

You didn’t realize you were crying. You’ve smeared blue, on one of the pencil sketches. And that’s the trouble, when you run low. You never know, which color will last the longest. After all… After all, you haven’t exactly been feeling all that sad lately. You’ll be better in a bit. You always are.

You reach for your stash belt, hanging on the chair in one corner. Even if all you do is hold it, this one last remaining lifeline to normalcy. Wouldn’t it just be great if you wound up crying all over it. But you’re too tired to care now. You fall asleep with it cradled against your chest right where your soul should be, and what’s the difference, anyway?

* * *

You awake to a series of sharp knocks at the front door. Sure enough, your stash belt is all but stuck to the side of your face, and you’ve got a splitting headache to boot. It’s dark still, mostly, and you’d probably just roll over and go back to sleep except for the creak down the hall, and you remember.

You start up, looking for the time. The numbers 6 00 gleam at you from about seven locations throughout the room; you have a lot of clocks.

You suppose it’s as good a time as any, to get up. You wince at the temperature of the floor and remind yourself to put in carpet later.

The hall is lit by a series of nightlights all along the top. The guest room door is closed, but you figure he’ll be out soon enough with all that knocking going on.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” you grumble to no one, and wind your way down the stairs. Then back up. You get lost yourself sometimes, when you’re this tired. By this time the knocking has grown louder and more insistent, and you stumble a little, on the right staircase this time, and rush to the door without even turning on the light.

A stack of about twelve books greets you at the door. You can’t even see around to the one who carries them, but it’s no matter. You take them silently, and shut the door again without bothering to look.

“Don’t worry about this,” you grunt, heaving them up onto the table. “They just get confused. See, I put my house right where the library is, usually. Figured I’d get the least amount of accidental visits here. Turns out I get a bit more than I bargained for during the summer months, but by the time I set up here I didn’t really want to move it, and I’m sorta hoping they can learn? Eventually.” You sigh, leaning onthe table and trying to smile.

Error is at the foot of the stairs with a blanket all wrapped around his head and shoulders. It’s not really the best time of year for wool. You try to keep things in a house updated to fit the seasons; time is very important to you. But you must’ve forgotten. You rarely enter the guest room, after all.

“L-Less static,” he informs you, going over to the window, and you wonder how much of that you just said out loud. “Why’d they come so early?”

“Ah, well, about that…” You stick your head in the refrigerator. “Most of them aren’t quite used to telling time, either. We didn’t have it, when we… Well, never mind, the point is, I set it up to be pretty much normal and we’re not yet. Normal, I mean.” You chuckle, scratching at the back of your head. “I’ll keep working on it though. Shouldn’t be too long before… Oh, right, do you want to eat or go back to sleep or…?”

Error ignores you. Staring off toward the table. “Well, are you g-gonna take them back?”

“What?”

“The books.”

Ah. You’d forgotten them already. It occurs to you that Error likely has ulterior motives for wanting to return the books so soon, but the fact remains that you do need to return them, or else add twelve library books to the already insurmountable clutter of your dining room. Besides, they’re not yours.

Dawn is just breaking on the horizon when you step out with about half the books under your arm. Error offered to carry the rest. He glances around while you lock the door.

“It always this quiet?” he asks.

“Uhm, usually.” You start down the steps. “Especially since you can’t always see them, depending.” You’ve colored everything so brightly, after all. Dark red bricks and ornate lampposts. Neon lights and climbing vines.

The library is just across the cobbled street. You pull a second key out of your pocket and let yourself in.

Spiral staircases and tiered shelves. A cramped, vacant circulation desk, piled high with uncategorized tomes and ancient computers.

“Whoa.”

“Ahah. I know, right? I went a little overboard.” You set your books next to the others and watch him peer up, into the stacks.

“D-Doesn’t anyone else work here?”

“Uh, well, you know, I’m not sure they m-made them yet.” You trip over a pile of books you left on the floor a year ago and land on the floor in the middle of the maze. A couple of dusty tomes tumble down onto your head and you sneeze. “I’m fine,” you call because you figure you’d better, just in case he’s wondering. But he isn’t. He’s just flipping through one of the larger physics books over there in one corner.

“That one doesn’t have the joke book,” you tell him, getting to your feet and dusting yourself off. “I meant to get one set up but you know how it is.”

“Huh?” He glances up, and his eyes are far away. “Oh. N-No, it’s whatever.” He sets the book back down. “Are you done now?”

“I think so. For now, anyway.” You step gingerly over the next wall of books and follow him out.

It’s nearly daylight, now. You might need to adjust the speed of it, later.

Error stops cold with one foot still on the first step. Rigid. Form flickering like crazy.

“What is it?” You peer over his shoulder, shutting the door behind you. “Oh. Hang on.” You brush past him, wincing at the sudden, stinging shock, and start across the street. “Hold on a second,” you repeat, and put on your best show of nonchalance as you approach the newcomer.

He waits for you, tall and monochromatic. Looking back at you with those sunken, hooded eyes. You don’t say anything. He wouldn’t respond if you did. So you just stand there, in his shadow almost, and close enough to touch. Sometimes he does - reaches out to touch that bony hand to your shoulder in an attitude of almost-affection. But not today. Today he just wants to stand there, evidently, and watch you.

He gets like this, sometimes. You know he’d be more settled, if you came back at night. But you wouldn’t, and that makes all the difference.

After a few minutes, he walks away. Long strides, erect shoulders. You don’t watch him go. Alone in the street. The wind picks up and pushes past you, playing with the ends of your scarf.

It’s your turn to jump when you turn and find him there, just behind you and in full color, no question what he’s feeling. “The h-hell was that?” Error grates, glaring up the street with his hands in his pockets.

And somehow, you can’t quite manage the cheery tone anymore. “Oh, that’s…that’s, uh, my brother.”


	2. The Overestimated

“Why don’t you just f-fix it?”

You’re drawing again. And not even sure what, sitting there on your front porch and trying not to think. You didn’t feel like going in yet, and he didn’t seem to either so now you’re both just sitting there, and the only ones for miles, probably, since Papyrus left. You may or may not have been sick a little, after he did.

“What?” The sun is blinding on the page. But you’re the one who wanted sun. You wanted this schedule, this window of time for natural light that at once inhibits and illuminates your efforts.

Out of the corner of your eye you can see him gesture flippantly at the space before him - sparkling pavement and cobbled houses, blinding sun and empty stalls.

“S-Seeing as you can make… an-anything you like, why _don’t_ you?”

It’s a stupid question, a naive question you’ve been trying to answer for ages without his help, and long before he thought of it, either. “It’s the only thing I can’t make,” you respond shortly, and reach for another pen.

He’s staring, you can tell, but you don’t look. “What is?” his voice comes quieter now, and none of the sarcasm from before - but no less frustrating.

“Like, s… people. I can’t make… people. Not by myself.” And is that relief, on his face when you look? Whatever it is, it rubs you the wrong way. Only, when you reach for it - that wounded, damaged sort of feeling- it doesn’t come.

That’s when you remember. You running low, still. Probably a lot, by now. Especially after heaving up nearly half of what you had left.

One by one you dig them out, the vials, and uncap them. You glare a little, with the red. And giggle, at the yellow. The tears start coming with the blue, and you wish you would’ve taken that one first. But it’s always this way, when you wait this long to replenish.

He watches you, silently horrified. “Wh… Why do you help them?” That question from last night. The one you know you’ve got to answer, eventually.

You blink. Wipe your mouth on one sleeve. Playing stupid. “Who?”

“The… the _players_. Th-They don’t care about you. L-Look what they did to your… world. To your _brother.”_ He’s trembling. And not with glitches, this time.

You frown and think for a moment. “Is that… why the whole…” You mime invisible strings.

That seems to remind him. “I’ve got to go,” he says suddenly, and gets to his feet.

“Where?”

“B-Back… I… How do I….” he casts about for something he’ll never find.

“There’s nothing there.” Calm. Collected. _Polite._

“Wh-What do you mean?”

“I mean, that was just… I’ll stop now, if you like. Putting stuff there. If it bothers you so much.” You resume your sketching without another word of explanation.

A hand, red and gold, slaps down with sudden force onto the page. Smearing ink and lead and sunlight. “Hey. Squid. L-Look at me.”

It’s too soon for a fight. Too soon after you’ve taken them, the paints. You’re always far too emotional at the start, before they’ve settled. “Squid?” You tilt your head. “Oh, you mean because - oh!” No one has ever called you anything but your name before. And hardly that. “Is that like a nick - ”

“No. Just sh-shut up and listen.” He’s angry too. Ha-ha.

“You may have saved my ass back there. But d-don’t think for one minute I’m g-gonna stay here and go along with your little game. B-Because you might think it’s fine to torture your own brother just so you’re not alone but I don’t d-do that.”

You don’t mean to shove him. Hard, in the chest, with the heels of your hands so he skids back. It’s a reaction more than anything else, and you’re as stunned as he is.

“Oh.” Your voice trembles. You’re crying again. “Oh, please, please, I’m not usually like this, I’ll be normal in a bit and we can talk, please, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go but don’t leave because of this, I’d feel awful.” Even though it’s lie because you don’t know what you’re usually like, what’s _normal_ because you’ve never been in this situation before, you’ve never had to _deal_ with anyone before, at least not somebody who deals back, and you’re tired, you’re so tired of trying when nothing works.

He’s got paint down his shirt. Blue and yellow. Must’ve got on your hands. Before you hit him.

For a moment he stands there, looking down at you with those wild red eyes. Then - “C-Clean yourself up. You’re a mess.” And he’s gone.

* * *

Cool water. Trickling down your face. Collecting in the lines beneath your eye sockets. You shut off the faucet, patting the moisture away. For a moment you stand there, alone by the sink with a towel pressed up against your face.

It didn’t take long for the paints to settle. Just like you said it wouldn’t. It’s with a clear head that you step outside again. There’s somebody over there by one of the shops. It’s too bright for you to see clearly. Brilliant, late afternoon sunlight slants down between the chimneys.

“Welp,” you say aloud to no one. It’s not good, you’ve decided, to get out of practice with hearing your own voice. “Little late for work, but… better late, than never.”

It helps you, when you make things - to feel more like yourself. Whoever that is. There’s no interaction with the creators - you never see them, only their ideas, trickling in formless primordial pools between the stars. That’s how you know they’re out there. Somewhere. And so, you just add a little color, that’s all. To get things working again, to get their _minds_ working again, before you leave. And then, if it’s stopped when you come back, you do it all over again.

It’s addicting. The progress. The reactions, to what you do. That’s how you know _you’re_ there, and not just some unknown’s forgotten dream, but a living, moving, feeling _you,_ alone but not erased.

Error isn’t like that. Error is just one more unremarkable Sans, escaped from an old, forgotten universe. He even said so - that the creators, they don’t care about him. They didn’t do anything for him, that was you, and you did for him what you do for everyone. So what if he’s gone now, along with the rest of his timeline? It’s not like anyone will notice.

It’s nearly midnight by your calculations, when you feel it. A familiar rippling in the atmosphere.

Destruction.

You pretend you’re not excited, when you change course in mid teleport, nearly drowning yourself in the process.

You pretend you’re not excited, when you scowl mournfully over the imminent disintegration of another universe you’ve forgotten the name to.

You pretend you’re not excited, when you heave that giant brush up onto your shoulder and take up a challenger's stance in the street, feet spread, in his path while the inhabitants run, screaming, for a nonexistent place to hide.

“Don’t worry,” you tell them, though you're not sure if they can hear. “I got this.”

“Really?” He’s got a mocking, cynical twist to his mouth. “And here I thought you were having t-technical difficulties.”

“That’s you.” You cock your head at him. At the half sky above. The crumpling cityscape. “So, uh… why you doing this?”

He’s got his hands in his pockets. And trails of blue, spilling from the edges. “I’ll answer when y-you do.”

You sigh heavily. Even if you’re anything but tired, now. “Are you gonna stop?”

“Are you?”

“No.” A sudden defiance, and you grin. You can’t help it.

He lets fly with those strings. And not even a warning for what he’s aiming for. They fall short, about an inch, of even touching you. _You_. And he looks bewildered, when he reels them back in.

You’re just furious. So that’s the game he wants to play, huh? And you’ve moved without thinking again. That red gob of paint hurtling towards him is a knife when it hits, right where his chest was a moment ago, and a fully functioning soul beneath it, you imagine, though it clearly hasn’t done him any good.

He curses, jerking violently to one side before he’s gone, and the knife with him. You spend rather more time looking for it than you do in repairing the damage, but in the end you’ve cleaned up the mess just like you’re supposed to. Because it might be against your ethics, to change things; but he changed them first, and that makes all the difference. 

“Wew,” you tell yourself at the end, with your feet dangling over the edge of the timeline, and not at all disappointed that it's over so soon. “Sure hope I don’t have to deal with that again.”

* * *

It’s quiet when you get home. It’s always quiet at home, but this is a different kind of quiet. The kind you started to recognize only after you created the dawn, and the small hours just before.

The refrigerator hums peacefully in its corner by the sink, the soft glow from the night light ripples over the linoleum, and somehow you can’t quite drag yourself up the stairs, into the dark and the silence. You sit down at the table, resting your forehead in your heads. It’s been a long time since you stayed up all night; not since you established the cycle of time, and abided by it with rigid devotion even from universes away.

The glasses are right where you left them in the center of the table, carefully placed between the spices and a glass vase that you’ve been using as a glorified pencil holder since ages ago. You pick them up, peering through to the blurred and distorted image on the other side.

A pop like a firecracker and they drop, skittering against the wood and the glass.

Scarlet. Trailing, sticky, onto the table in asymmetrical splatters, oozing between his fingers and soaking down into the braided rug. His face is a sickening, ashen gray, and he’s torn off one sleeve of his jacket as though in vain attempt to locate the source of an insufferable pain.

“It…” And there’s no outrage - not even a challenge - in his voice. “It won’t stop.”

The chair clatters to the floor behind you. A low hiss escapes his teeth as he eases his hand down, away from his shoulder, and you tell yourself it’s just paint when you reach, grimly, for a closer examination of the wound. And perhaps there is some, still, inside and boring deeper, because it obeys your unspoken command for it to stop, for it to dissolve and come out, on its own and indistinguishable from the pooling sea of blood.

He bleeds a lot, even for a Sans.

And in his face - that instant relief, followed by a blind panic when the bleeding doesn’t stop.

“I’m…” Your own voice, calm, and coming from a far off place. “Let me get… something to wrap it in.”

You reach for your brush. Hesitate. Your hands are caked in blood. Never mind, you grab for it anyway. Whatever you end up making, it won’t tie itself. Your hands are trembling when you try.

He lurches a little. Sinks down into a chair. Holding his head with his good hand. “The hell was it,” he slurs, and you shake your head, smearing blood all over your face when you try and dash away the sweat.

“I don’t know. You started it.” You didn’t mean to snap. You didn’t mean to do a lot of things. You focus on tightening the fabric against the opening. Maybe a couple more times around…

“Everything okay? B-Back in that little world, I mean.” He sounds almost sarcastic.

“What, you mean… the…” It makes no sense. “Yeah I fixed it.”

He snorts. “You make that one too?”

You don’t remember. You think so.

“Th-Thought you couldn’t make people.”

“Not without help.”

Error sits up a little. “He said you do it all the time. Said you even populate the most d-desolate words.”

“Who did?” But you don’t really care.

He winces, when you pull it tight again. “I don’t know, s-some weirdo.”

You frown. You’re trying to make a knot. “What universe?”

“I don’t know, n-none of them. He’s like us.”

“What? There’s nobody else like - ”

“Stop it. Stop it with that _stupid_ act already.”

“Don’t shake me! I’m almost done, and you’re getting blood everywhere.” You’re more annoyed than anything.

“It’s not blood,” he sighs, and lets go. “Are you d-done yet?”

You step back, examining your work. His shoulder is all wrapped up in about an inch of cloth that was probably white at some point. It doesn’t seem right, but you can’t think what you should have done instead.

It’s your turn to sink down. To the floor, since you can’t remember where the other chair is. He’s got his head down in his hand again, eyes closed. Sweating.

“Do you… do you want me to make you a new jacket?”

He snorts again. Derisively. “No thanks. I can fix it.”

“You can?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty g-good with needles.” He seems to think he’s said something funny.

You hug your knees. Trying to still your trembling. Dried blood, or whatever it is, cakes around your knuckles.

You’re not sure how long you sit there. Silent, listening to the hum of the refrigerator. The ticking of the clocks.

After a while you realize someone is calling for you. “Ink. Hey, Ink.” And he’s kicking you too! Did you fall asleep?

“Huh? What?” You peel your face off your knees and blink at him. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. D-Doesn’t matter, just… Listen, can I borrow that book? The one I was looking at, in the library.”

“Oh.” You ease yourself up enough to peer over to the clock above the sink. “Yeah, sure, I can… get it.”

“I remember where it is. I’ll b-bring it back later.” It’s then you realize he’s on his feet, nearer the door. He looks better.

“Oh… Okay.” Your mind is trying to catch up. “Yeah, no need to check it out. You can just bring it when… or… just… you can have it, I guess.”

Blink. “Seriously?”

You shrug. Knees aching as you get to your feet. “Where you taking it?”

“Back. B-beyond the void a ways.”

“Beyond the…”

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice. You w-wouldn’t like it though.”

What? “I wouldn’t?”

“Yeah there’s no… color. Or… dead guys, walking around.”

It’s a joke.

Ink, it’s a joke.

You think you’re almost trying to laugh maybe, when he steps out the door.

“Oh. Oh, wait, if you’re gonna be reading, don’t forget your…” You reach back for the table, but there’s no need.

The glasses are gone.

* * *

You’ve never been very good at cleaning. At getting rid of anything, that isn’t wanted. You try your best though. To scrub it off the floor, the table, your hands, you face. You’re not sure what to do with the rug. Maybe if you douse with something, and hang it dry. Isn’t that how people usually wash things?

It’s quiet for a while after that. No more destroying. You go out once, just to see if there’s anything to be made or worked on.

Nothing seems worth it.

After a few weeks you realize you’re bored. That’s what happens, when you run low. When you run low because you haven’t been making anything. When you haven’t been making anything because you’re bored.

And using up whatever you’ve got left on meaningless, personal projects that will never move, never speak, never feel anything on their own.

When he comes back it’s with that book still open in front of his face, red glasses perched on his nasal bone. “What do you think of this?” he asks abruptly, and you glance over the outstretched page.

“Huh,” you tell him, seated at the table with your hands still buried in something like rainbow putty.

He snaps it shut. Lowers his hand. “Y-You didn’t even read it.”

You shrug, working at the shape. “Did so. Was just a while ago.”

“And you r-remember?”

It stings a little, whether he meant it to or not. “Of course. I read them all at some point.”

“ _All_ the books? In the library?” He’s astounded. Tugging off those glasses and all but glaring at you. “How long have you b-been here?

You freeze. Cast about for the nearest clock. But it doesn’t tell you. That’s why you put it up to begin with.

You’re gonna be sick, you know it. And you’re also keenly aware that you can’t afford that right now.

“You okay?” he says gruffly. And from well out of the way.

You don’t respond. Because if you say that you are you might not be in a moment. It’s been a while, since something like that got this kind of reaction out of you. You grip the table’s edge, one hand at your mouth. “Did… Did it stop bleeding?” you ask, by way of regaining control.

“Yeah.” You can see well enough that it did. He even fixed his jacket, just like he said he would. You can’t even tell where it was as torn.

“You haven’t been wrecking anything,” you get out, and you think you’re quite calm now.

He thumps the book down on the table, even though you told him he could keep it, and crosses his arms. “I been reading. Wh-What’s your excuse?”

You’re annoyed, a little. “I’m just… trying to…” The putty shoots of its own across the room and lodges there, stuck against the wall.

You’re not sure who starts giggling first. Only that you’re both slightly hysterical, and that only makes it worse.

“Alright.” You get to your feet, straightening your scarf and holding out a hand. “Show me what _you_ made, then.” It’s casual. Riding on the end of a laugh, and unassuming.

He visibly stiffens, that old scowl returning to his face in the blink of an eye. “What?”

“Come on,” you try to keep it light. “Even you can’t live in a vacuum. Let me see.”

He glowers with dark uncertainty, searching for something you know he’ll never find. And then - “Fine,” he consents grudgingly, and not to your surprise. Most people can’t resist showing off what they’ve made - however they make it. “But don’t… m-mess with anything while you’re there. I like it just about the way it is.”

You shrug, unconcerned and noncommittal. And he yanks you into the void with a burst of static.

* * *

The nothing isn’t solid beneath your feet before you’re passing on, through a barrier like shattering glass and beyond, to a place not between the worlds but behind them. It’s with an old, familiar, gut-wrenching jolt that you realize you don’t know where you are.

You’re used to it - the blank whiteness of an empty page, waiting to be filled. But this… this is different. A canvas you can’t touch, a color you can’t grasp because it’s so fundamentally not there in a way that even nothing isn’t there. Even nothing seems like something by comparison, a longed for void that exists solely to define the gaps between the somethings.

This isn’t nothing. It’s the very opposite of nothing, yet still not something. It's the anti-something, an annihilating not-void more sure than any shadow.

An anti-void.

It’s little enough comfort he’s still got ahold of you by the sleeve. That he’s not afraid here; it’s what he chose. Ink splatters, unfettered, into the something that isn’t nothing, the nothing that isn’t something and you reel, horrified, as it is swallowed without a trace. And you, all but nullified yourself at the prospect.

“Whoa. T-Told you you wouldn’t like it.”

The words break through into your consciousness, a reminder that you are, in fact, still here, and you pull away from him. Looking for yourself, amidst whatever that is not.

“Here. D-Do you need to sit down?”

On what. Ah, you see on what. You can remember it all now, in a moment of striking clarity - you made it, once. Even if you can’t remember when. It doesn’t bother you, how he got it. That he stole it, from whatever universe you thoughtlessly graced with it.

It’s just a beanbag chair.

But you don’t want to sit. “I see,” you tell him, though you don’t see much at all, just an old box television set amidst a mock imitation of a living room setting. You can only imagine the kind of reception it gets out here.

“Actually it’s n-not bad. Can catch most of what goes on back in the multiverse. Even if it’s mostly g-garbage.”

“What? Really?” You’re interested despite yourself. You step closer while he fiddles wth it. Hits it a couple of times, till the static thins out. A starry dreamscape winks out at you through the screen.“Whoa. You rigged this up yourself?”

“Uh… y-yeah, I guess.” He looks uncomfortable. “It’s just a tv.”

You slouch down into the beanbag after all, more because your legs give out than anything else. He’s watching you carefully. “Anyways…I usually just w-watch one of the stories like Undernovela. When I’m too tired to read, that is. Or… the voices start getting to me.” He switches it off.

You blink. “The voices?”

“Well, I mean…” He shrugs. “They’re pretty close I guess. To here. And s-sometimes I can hear them.”

“The voices?” you repeat stupidly, and he frowns.

“Y-You want me to take you back?”

You shake your head. “I can get back on my own.”

“Yeah I figured but… you look a little...”

It’s comfortable. The way the chair sort of swallows you, and you don’t have to think or look out. You’d make one of these for your own place, if you had room.

“Uhm… You’re on my ch-chair.”

He did tell you to sit here. But instead of arguing, you move as though to get up. To make another, only you can’t. There’s something missing, when you try. When you go to lift that brush off your back.

That’s when the panic sets in. “What voices,” you ask him, in a voice like ice.

He looks confused. Scratching his head. “Uh, like… you know, the… the players, I guess. Are you sure you don’t want to go b-back?”

“Error, you… you _talk_ to the creators?”

“No, squid, I t-told you, _they_ talk to _me._ But only ‘cause I’m here. You’d probably hear them too, if you stick around long enough.”

You’d like that. You’d like that very much.

You get to your feet unsteadily, and broomy nothing more than a means to keep your balance. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

“I want to go back now.” You can’t on your own after all. Paint just comes out colorless, like everything else around here. And it scares you.

“Th-Thought you already did,” he blips and gets up.

It’s not comforting. The color, the sound, the strength rushing back when you return. You head for the stairs right away, without even bothering to say goodbye. After all, talking never did you any good. Screaming never did you any good; there’s only silence in return, and that’s what Error likes isn’t it, the silence and the nothing, and the not nothing even more. It’s what he’d make out of the whole multiverse if he could, and you’re not so sure you would stop him.

You peel them all off the walls. And no crying about it this time. You haven’t got a garbage or a recycling bin, let alone a paper shredder. Maybe you can get Error to destroy them for you. The thought of it makes you smile, all those imagined worlds blowing out in clouds of dust and no one to remember them, not even you because you’ve destroyed the only thing that helps you do it. You always were bad at remembering things.

In the end though, you haven’t asked Error to do any such of a thing, and though the papers crumple easily enough, you’re no closer to destroying them than you were when you hung them on the walls. You sit there in the pile, kicking them petulantly around with your feet. You’re not sure how much time has passed before you pick up the sound of the faucet coming on from below. You figure you’d better check; it’s been a while since anyone came into your kitchen uninvited, but it does happensometimes.

“You didn’t t-tell me to go,” Error says when you get down, and you shake your head. He’s got another book propped up under his face at the table. A low, steady hum tells you the burner is on beneath the teakettle.

“Uhm…”

He glances up again, through the lenses you made, and his idle, almost comfortable expression gives you pause.

“There’s a… a couple of worlds I wondered if you might take a look at with me.” That edge of uncertainty, in your voice. You didn’t know what you meant to ask before you did.

A flicker of surprise. The teakettle goes off, and you pick it up out of habit, not even waiting for an answer.

He can make tea later if he wants to.

He doesn’t try anything at first. You’d sort of half way figured he might just let fly with those strings at the first sight of them, the worlds you toiled over the most. But he just walks with you, down one dusky boulevard and on to the next.

It’s night for most of the multiverse. You try and imagine what it must’ve been like to grow up with it - the night, and the dawn. To live in any one of these places, and never knowing a single thing about the others, or the voices.

“Error…” Your voice comes out all trembling and foreign again, not like your voice at all. Or maybe it is and you’ve forgotten what it was really meant to sound like, all those eons ago. You words fog up in the air before you, and you dip your face back down into your scarf, embarrassed, somehow,to catch sight of your own thoughts. “Or… Or, Sans. You’d prefer if I called you that, wouldn’t you?”

He doesn’t answer one way or another. He took his glasses off some time ago, but he doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to where he’s going.

You stop beneath an old fashioned streetlamp at the next street corner. The wind picks up, trying to carry your scarf along with it.

“W-What’s this place called?” he asks, perhaps for the sake of politeness.

“I don’t know, some tale or another.” You didn’t forget exactly, it’s more that you can’t be bothered to remember. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Not to you.”

“Not much.” He doesn’t lie about it. He doesn’t play nice.

You huff and kick one foot on the pavement. It’s starting to snow. “You wanna destroy it?”

He blinks at you. “That an invitation or a g-general inquiry?”

“Both.”

“Why?” And still he hasn’t made a move. Hands in his pockets. Still as stone.

“Because… I don’t care about it anymore.”

“If you d-didn’t care we wouldn’t be here.”

He’s gonna make you say it, is that it? And all the times before when he didn’t need an explanation, to wreck everything.

“Please.” It’s all you can say. And not very well at that.

He starts walking again. “You know I don’t ruin things just for the fun of it?” His voice is sharp. And suddenly it’s hard to keep up. “Th-There’s probably a lot of people out there by now who’d get their shits and giggles out of seeing me s-suffer. But me, I’m not… I’m not like that.”

He’s not, huh. You fall into step beside him, and never mind the slush between your toes. It’s cold, though.

He glances at you. Lowers his voice conspiratorially, so that you’ve got to lean close just to hear. “See, I… I make them suffer for a m-moment, right? The people, in these crazy, messed up w-worlds you’ve given them. But you… Y-you make them suffer an eternity.” He whistles low between his teeth. “And now you want the easy way out, is that it?” He laughs, and there’s a piercing dialup tone just behind it. “So you finally got m-mad, at the players. Only you c-can’t do anything about it, they go right on m-making whether you help them or not, right? They don’t need you.” It’s mean. It’s so mean you look away. “But don’t t-try and get me to take care of it f-for you,” he goes on, and you stumble a little when he stops. “Don’t t-try and get me to take care of it f-for you so you can laugh and feel better till you get bored of that t-too and go back.”

He leaves you alone in the snow. And the frigid air, cold and stagnant within your empty chest.


End file.
